September 2
70mi/113km
1000ft/304m elevation gain
It was so nice to sleep in a dry bed, and most of our gear got fairly dried out. Our shoes were still damp, but the tent, pad, and quilt were nice and dry, and those are the most important pieces.
We ate breakfast at the hotel and packed up the bikes. The hotel had us store the bikes in a room near the lobby that used to be a bar but is now filled with storage, recycling, and broken equipment. While we were in there packing up, another cyclist came down to pack up his bike. He’s heading in the opposite direction up to Stewart, so we exchanged notes about the road ahead and shared stories of how wet we all were yesterday.
It was a little disappointing to see it was still cloudy and damp outside, but at least it didn’t rain. We followed a bike path out of town until it ended and we joined the highway. There was a nice wide shoulder, better than we’ve had since the Alaska Highway back in the Yukon, so the traffic was not bad.
Eventually the sun came out, and we could finally see the mountains again. For much of the day we followed the Skeena River to our left, and busy train tracks to our right.
The views were lovely. We saw another Osprey, and some little yellow birds I never got a great look at. The ravens have been replaced by crows. At one point, I saw something swimming on the river and got out my binoculars to realize it was a seal. First of this journey, and we ended up seeing at least five. We also saw two more black bears today.
This highway has a lot of nice rest stops along the river, so we always had nice places to take a break. In the evening, we stopped at our fourth rest stop of the day to cook dinner before heading on to look for a spot to camp. We didn’t have to look much further at all. We found a forest service road with a clearing and nice view, despite being under some power lines. We enjoyed a lovely sunset view.
